And, as ZeuS is well known in security circles as a piece of particularly nasty malware capable of stealing sensitive data from victims (i.e., bank account details), it’s perhaps no surprise Microsoft clamped down so swiftly.

However, Redmond loosened its security shackles a matter of hours later when it was discovered that Chrome had been targeted due to a faulty signature update issued to both Microsoft Security Essentials and Microsoft Forefront. Oops.

“We released an update signature (1.113.672.0) at 9:57 a.m. PDT,” outlined a Microsoft spokesperson in an official statement. “But approximately 3,000 customers were impacted.”

“Affected customers should manually update Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) with the latest signatures,” the company added. “To do this, simply launch MSE, go to the update tab and click the Update button, and then reinstall Google Chrome.”

Google has since said it will also release an update to help automatically rectify any content damage done by the false positive.

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